Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Questions on the Welsh Assembly Elections Please

On Friday, I'm going to the National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff to record two programmes - a special Welsh edition of Blogger TV featuring six Welsh political bloggers, and also a debate between representatives of all four main political parties on the Welsh Assembly elections. Participants include Glyn Davies AM (Con), Anthony Hunt (Lab), Peter Black AM (LibDem) and an as yet unnamed Plaid Cymru representative.

I'd like to submit questions to this panel from 18 Doughty Street viewers and my blog, so if you have a burning Welsh related issue you'd like an answer on, feel free to submit a question in the comments. I need them submitted by midnight on Thursday.

Iain, I am rather hoping that you will be using this as an opportunity to pose serious questions about the Welsh Assembly, not giving people an excuse to put racist hate speech about the Welsh in this blog.

Ask Labour why they were castigating Plaid Cymru for wanting to get into a coalition [with the Tories].

Yet it now tranpsires, following some excellent investigative reporting from the journalist Vaughan Roderick that Labour have been considering entering into a coalition with Plaid Cymru. Ask them why there has been such rank hypocrisy over this issue.

A sign of the sort of stealthy trick the devolutionists are prepared to indulge in to try move ever further towards full powers was to arrogate to themselves the right to "name" the sizeably over-budget Assembly Building the "Senedd" - the Welsh word for Parliament (not Assembly).

It is not right to claim that more powers will ipso facto mean better Assembly administration - nothing so far has shown that there is a capability there (in any party) to deliver - merely extra cost to the taxpayer and Wales suffers further by now not featuring in many areas in comparative league tables with England - so the performance of the Assembly cannot properly be assessed.

Slowly Wales slips off the pace, notwithstanding the relatively generous Barnett formula for Treasury funding (until England loses its patience with that and Wales is left to fend for itself).

You might ask where Wales would feature if we could see proper comparative tables with England on health, education etc. after 8 years of Assembly government - and how much the bill for this underachievement has been?

You could ask whether the decision to delay the announcement as to the future of the neurosurgery dept at Swansea's Morriston Hospital until after the election was not typical New Lab at its worst.Andrew Davies would definitely be out at Swansea West if the decision had been made when scheduled.This is a good seat for tactical voting.If enough Tories are game for it,the Lib Dems should win.